Dragons' Blood: A Fire Emblem Awakening Novelization

Chapter 22: Destiny

Chrom's face was crossed with dueling emotions as he sat with his fingers curled around the arms of his chair. From his right, Elysa reached over and covered one of his tensed hands with her own, but kept her eyes on the woman seated across the table.

"You may leave," Elysa nodded to the guards, hovering nearby. They looked at one another uncertainly.

"Elysa..." One of Chrom's knuckles cracked.

"Lady Tiki brought her here. She wouldn't have done so without good reason."

"Even so, we—"

"Don't talk about me like I'm not sitting right here," Aversa muttered. She set her hands on the table with an audible slap. "I'm irked enough the dragon couldn't be bothered to stay and talk for me, I don't need to be treated like a prisoner of war."

"No one's treating you like a prisoner," Elysa said quietly. "But you must understand that the last terms we parted on were far from amicable."

"You're still alive," Aversa slid her eyes over to Elysa. "And I'm still alive. Both of us thanks to the Divine Dragon of yours."

"I don't understand why she saved you," Chrom growled.

"Because we have a common enemy," Aversa said tiredly. "I won't bother trying to be diplomatic with you, prince, but I've been told that she spoke with you—" she tipped a finger at Elysa, "—at length as well, in your dream-state."

"Her voice and Grima's were... often present, yes," Elysa replied uneasily. "What did Tiki show you?"

"The truth of my youth. I was 'adopted' through the slaughter of my parents. My upbringing was built on a lie."

"Easy to say, hard to believe," Chrom rested his chin in his hand.

"Let her continue," Elysa said.

Aversa narrowed her eyes. "I've lived my life under the Fell Dragon's shadow as if that darkness were the only sunlight there is to know in this world. I wasn't a rescued orphan, I was orphaned by Validar."

Elysa studied her adoptive sister carefully. Her newly returned memories floated past...

Aversa was the older sibling. Many of Elysa's childhood memories were limited to time spent with her mother, but there were days when the Grimleal girl would visit her, or they'd steal out of camp to go on adventures in the nearby town or woods. Aversa was always doting – if not somewhat patronizing, but Elysa had no negative feelings associated with her times spent with Aversa. Her mother often warned her to stay away from Aversa, in her efforts to keep young Elysa from too much Grimleal influence... but Elysa couldn't remember Aversa fanaticizing about the Fell Dragon at all in their youth, unlike the other cultists, and their father.

"When was it that you came to believe... that 'Grima's truth, is the only truth?'" Elysa asked.

"When you left," Aversa's voice took on a guarded tone. "Validar told us all that your mother and Tharja were traitors and they'd stolen you from glory. And he told me that it was your destiny to save the world. This was around the time that the last Ylissean war was ending... Validar took me to see the ruin of the world, the filth of mankind — and he told me that Lord Grima could put an end to it all, bring about a world without such discord. It was easy to believe him when the only other people who I cared about had abandoned me so recently."

Elysa closed her eyes. There was an old sense of guilt in her heart, at leaving Aversa behind. She couldn't bring herself to hold anything against Aversa for living the life that she'd been put up to, especially when Elysa had been given a second chance at a different life herself. Grima's return, the reset of her memories, had brought her into a completely different world, severed from the taint of the Grimleal past.